


Circuit Board To Brain, Two Lungs Collecting Change

by prospitianknightmares



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Crushes, Fluff, M/M, Non-Sexual Intimacy, One Shot, Secret Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 07:50:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,103
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14015673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prospitianknightmares/pseuds/prospitianknightmares
Summary: Simmons gets some help with cyborg-part maintinence.





	Circuit Board To Brain, Two Lungs Collecting Change

**Author's Note:**

> ONE BIG HUMAN HEART, GENTLY BEEPING (i accidentally didn't paste a section at the end because im an idiot so sorry if you saw that at first hghhg)

So, robot parts don’t last forever. 

Simmons had done his best to explain in layman’s terms something about the internal cooling fans breaking down or the wires or whatever (Grif wasn’t really listening, and Simmons is really bad at explaining things in layman’s terms), which did explain him involuntarily flinging a carton of milk halfway across the room during breakfast. So, whatever, right? Swap out some parts. It’s not that big a deal. 

The problem is that he can fix the leg himself, but you can’t really do maintenance on your own cyborg arm one-handed. Hence Grif sitting on the floor in front of him watching him pry off his own kneecap with a screwdriver.

“Ow!- Can you at least try to be careful?” The little red nodes at the base of Simmon’s arm detach from his skin as Grif lifts the prosthetic away. He rubs the stump it leaves with the hand that’s still attached. “It’s not supposed to hurt this much.”

“C’mon, cut me some slack. I’ve never done this before.”

He squeezes his shoulder. “Yeah, seems like it.”

“Anyway, shouldn’t the resident robotics expert be the one doing these repairs? Y’know, the one who actually made these things in the first place?"

“Pfft, no. Last time I got Sarge to help my whole left side hurt like a bitch for about a week. Fucked with the nerve endings. He’s not a delicate man.”

“Neither am I, dude. I won’t hesitate to fucking pummel you with your own disembodied arm.”

He snorts. “Yeah, sure.” He’s sitting at kind of a weird angle with his still-attached leg out to the side, the other one lying in front of him.

He pulls off some of the plating around the surface- the shell is smooth and shiny, but underneath it’s all multicolored wires and criss-crossing metal framework. There’s a hollow canister right where the two of segments of leg join, likewise under the plate connecting the upper and forearm. He grabs one of the little tubes of some weird fluid he had scattered about next to him and pops it in, and then does the same for the arm in a single well-practiced motion. 

“Okay...” Simmons leans more to the side and presses the base of the prosthetic leg up against the point where it connects to his torso. “So, uh, this part is kind of weird. Just watch.”

There’s a soft click as Grif pushes the ball at the base of the arm into the hollow socket indented in his shoulder. “...Okay?”

There’s a smattering of little pale flecks of dead skin around where the metal plating begins and a set of needle-thin wires with little red circle-disc-things attached to the end. Simmons holds one between his thumb and forefinger. 

He sighs. “This part always hurts.” Carefully, he presses one of the discs into his shoulder and grits his teeth as it slides underneath his skin.

“Gross.”

“Oh, don’t be a baby.”

“I didn’t say I wasn’t gonna do it. Just, you know. Gross.”

“Go whine about it later. You want me to have control over my own arm or not?”

Stabbing Simmons with a bunch of little red skin-piercing nodes is easy enough, once he gets into the rhythm of it. They’re supposed to be connecting his central nervous system to his arm or pick up impulses from his brain or something, so whenever he slides one in Simmons feels a jolt of pain run through his arm and into the rest of his body. He finishes hooking up his leg about five minutes before Grif’s done. (By the looks of it he’s got incredibly nimble fingers.)

“...And when you’re done, you just kind of turn it around like this, and it’s locked in.” He leans back, wraps his hand around his robotic upper thigh, and slowly twists around it like the lid on a jar of peanut butter. His leg rotates a full 360 degrees.

“Kinda creepy.”

“Hey, I didn’t design it. Probably would’ve been a lot more functional if I had.”

Grif places his arm on Simmons’s shoulder and starts turning it. It’s a lot harder than he made it seem, like turning a crank, so either he’s secretly super strong or Grif’s incredibly weak. It takes a while.

Simmons leans over, inspecting his newly-repaired prosthetic leg. Weird limb-turning mechanisms aside, it’s kind of cool-looking. There’s a translucent membrane connecting the segments of metal plating, divided and overlapping like a carapace, and the surface bends organically as it moves in spite of it’s metallic sheen. He’s not wearing a shirt for convenience’s sake (it’d either get in the way or snag on the exposed mechanical parts), so he can see the plating extending from his lower back to the front of his torso and up his stomach, red spots lining the edge and segmented into parts.

He has a splash of freckles across his back somehow even though he’d never seen the dude out in the sun without his armor, and he looks as if he hasn’t combed his hair in a while so it’s sticking out in every direction like some kind of square enix protagonist but it still looks okay in a way, and even sitting down and hunched over he sat in a way that made his shoulders seem a little broader, with his neck craned and his chest out and he feels the arm and the cold fluid running through it makes it feel like it has a pulse, and he can feel it if he focuses, and

he snaps the arm around suddenly and Simmons pulls himself away.

“OW- fuck!” The feeling of sensation returns to his prosthetic, like liquid mercury running through his veins. He takes in a sharp breath and exhales, shaking it loose. “I told you not to rush it.”

Shit. “Well, maybe it wouldn’t be so hard if you actually sat still for once in your life. Quit bouncing your leg.” (Nice save, Grif.)

“Yeah, yeah.” Simmons runs a metallic hand across his bare neck. “Man, these next few weeks are gonna suck.”

“Come again?”

He turns to face Grif. “Yeahhhh, I’m getting some replacement parts in about a month, but for now you’re gonna have to do this, like, daily.”

“Oh, no _way_ am I gonna do this every day.”

“Well, who else am I supposed to ask? Lopez? Donut?”

“Pfft, yeah, ask Donut. He probably wouldn’t mind.”

“Okay, I know you’re joking, but on the off-chance you aren’t, fuck no. It’d be way too, uh.” He pauses for a moment. “Nevermind.” (The word he was looking for is ‘intimate’.)


End file.
